Endgame
by tripping fruit
Summary: A collection of related oneshots that take place during Umbrella's downfall...a downfall that comes in the courtroom. LeonClaire centered, although other characters are present.
1. Of Humanity And Pencil Skirts

The court had recessed for lunch, but Leon wasn't very hungry. As a matter of fact, he was feeling a little ill. Listening to various members of Umbrella's upper echelon sit on the stand and try to _justify_ all the bizarre and sick things their company had done over the years just plain took the hunger growl right out of Leon's gut.

Sitting outside the courthouse in DC, he found himself wondering where all the reporters were—then he remembered that the government had been keeping the news of the trial fairly hush-hush, knowing that a media storm of unparalleled proportions would result if the government made public the trial dates. The media would be allowed in and around after all the _serious_ work was done.

Leon thought the whole _thing_ was rather serious, but even the government had to make concessions to the media at times. It seemed likely the media would be allowed in for things such as the sentencing and verdicts, not the actual trial proceedings themselves. He looked out at the mass of steps in front of him, the traffic passing by below, and tried to imagine it crowded with hordes of people.

He sighed. Damnit, he _had_ actually been hungry that morning, too.

"Hey." A slightly accent-tinged voice from behind him and the clacking of heels on the stone steps signaled Claire Redfield's approach. "You took off fast. I didn't even think I was going to get to say hello to you before you split for wherever."

"I had to get out of there before I went Hulk," Leon said, resting his elbows on his knees. The hot sun beat down on top of his head, permeated through his suit. "It'll be a miracle if we can make it all the way through this trial without someone standing up and shouting death threats."

Looking over and down, Claire's dress-shoed feet came into view on the step next to him. Leon looked up at her, having little choice but to let his eyes follow the lines of her body, shielding his eyes from the sun. It was the first time he'd ever seen her any fashion of dressed up; he had to admit, she cleaned up well. She looked right at home with the crowds of DC suits; she looked like someone's cute young intern or campaign volunteer. She also looked somewhat like a World War II-era secretary, not that there was anything wrong with that. Classy. Leon liked it.

"You're tellin' me," she said with a sigh, her voice strained. "Chris and I took turns holding each other back." Folding her arms over her chest she stared out at the traffic, shifting her weight and jutting a hip slightly. The black pencil skirt followed the lines of her body nicely. "The collective Redfield mood is pretty shitty right about now. Not only are we itching to punch some Umbrella face, we're being forced to dress up like we haven't since Dad died."

Leon smiled at little, even if it was kind of grim. He _definitely_ understood the desire to grab the Umbrella officials and make them feel just a _little_ of all the shit he'd had to go through. Maybe shoot one of them a couple of times, just for effect—_how do you like that, you fucking bastard, now get up and **run** and keep moving and trying to stay motherfucking alive because that's what **I** had to do!_ "You get used to a suit, after a while," Leon said, despite the anger-laden fantasies running through his head. "I did. Chris should be kind of used to it, right? I mean, Air Force and all."

Claire snickered. "Recall that Chris got his ass booted _out_ of the Air Force."

"Oh. Yeah." Leon patted the step next to him, ignoring the way the hot stone burned his hand slightly. "Have a seat, lady."

Claire smiled down at him, a little bitterly. "Can't," she said, and then added at his confused look: "Skirt and all. I wouldn't be able to get back up without makin' some kinda public spectacle of myself."

Leon nodded. "I see." This was the first time they'd seen each other in about two months; Claire had most recently been living in Richmond, Virginia, but had gone back to her home state of Alabama with Chris to "take care of things"—Leon figured it entailed visiting family and friends who had probably thought them dead. Really, he wanted to stand up and hug her, but he knew her well enough to sense her moods—Claire was not in a Hugging Mood. She was irritated.

And funnily enough, a mere two months in Alabama had brought back a little of the accent she'd had when he'd first met her, the accent that still clung thick to her brother's voice.

"So," Leon began after the silence, "you guys go back down to Alabama to see your people? Have a good time?" It struck Leon that he didn't know much of Claire's family history, other than her and Chris and what she'd mentioned moments ago about her father being dead. "Mom and stuff?"

She favoured him with that same little bitter smile. "Don't have a mom." Her voice was firm, snappish. There was a moment of awkward silence, before her face softened a little and she sighed. "Sorry."

Leon was attempting to figure out how to extricate his foot from his mouth in the pause that followed her apology. "No, it's okay. I probably shouldn't…uh, be asking, really."

"No, really. It's okay. You're just being polite—there was no reason for me to get pissed at _you_." Apparently Claire had decided to chance making a public spectacle of herself and very carefully lowered herself to the step next to him, wrapping her skirt tightly around her thighs and stretching her legs out, crossing them at the ankles. "I _do_ have a mom, somewhere—she took off right after I was born. No Dear John letter, nothing. Just a missing suitcase and a few other things gone. I was three months old."

"Shit." It seemed to be the best thing Leon could think of at the time—compared to Claire's family life, his was downright pleasant and normal. His parents were two hard-working Irish immigrants who'd settled in Detroit and set up shop, bringing with them their first child and were quick to have more. His father had been a cop in Belfast, but had opened an upholstering shop in America, where Leon and everyone else in his family had worked growing up. With the exception of his only older sister dying in a car accident when he was eighteen, Leon's family life had been fairly smooth. "I'm sorry. I wouldn't have asked if I'd have known."

"_If_ you'd've known. Which you didn't, so quit apologizing." Cracking her knuckles, Claire looked up at the sun squintingly, as if silently asking it why, exactly, it had to be beating down on them so directly. "You'd figure I wouldn't really care. I mean, I never knew the lady, so what's it matter? Chris is the one who should really have a problem with it—he was six when it happened. I mean, she was really his _mom_."

"Well, but still." Leon shrugged and took the opportunity to remove his suit coat; he was starting to bake inside of it. "Even if you never knew her, it's still rough. I think you're entitled to still be a little touchy about it."

Claire took a cue from Leon and removed the grey cardigan sweater she'd been wearing over a plain, short-sleeved black shirt. "I'm _not_, usually, and that's the funny thing. I think I'm really irritated in general, about everything." She moved to rub one of her eyes and then seemed to remember that she was wearing makeup, and made a noise of irritation as she let her hand drop. "I don't want to see these people stand trial. I want to _kill_ them."

Oh, he could definitely understand that. "I know," he replied quietly. "Me too."

"I've never hated anything or anyone so much in my life," Claire said, and gave a short bark of a laugh. "It makes me feel sick, you know? I'm supposed to be a civilized human being, right? Going back to college and all that? It doesn't feel right to me that I want to—" Trailing off, she made some sort of vague choking motion with her hands. "—I don't want to just _kill_ them, Leon, I want to _destroy_ them. I want to make it long and slow and _painful_ and I want them to look at me and know that _I'm_ doing it."

There was a moment of silence.

"Christ, it's sick. I don't want to feel this way. I don't want to think about things like that—it scares me that I do," Claire went on, looking over at Leon. "These people took something from me that I ain't never gonna get back."

More silence. "Your humanity," Leon supplemented, seeing Claire's nod. He knew. He felt the same way. There'd been a point in his life when he would have called a person a _sociopath_ for having the kind of thoughts that he did, sometimes. It was a lot harder to deal with it when _you_ were the one having the murderous thoughts. There was a lesson to be learned there, one that Leon had been confronted with repeatedly since Raccoon City—things are not always so black and white.

But he didn't necessarily feel good about the grey area, either.

"Are we just as bad as them, now?" Claire asked, looking back over at him. "I mean, are _we_ monsters now, too?" Her still-so-young, slightly freckled face was etched with worry that belonged on a face much older. "Before I would never have been able to do...I mean…shit, Leon, I've _killed_ people. Lots of them, in Paris. I would do it again, if I absolutely had to. Why are _they_ on trial in there, and not me? At what point did I become just as bad as them?"

Meeting her eyes and shaking his head, Leon's face was grave. "No. You're not as bad as them. _Never_ as bad as them. Those people in Paris would have killed you no sooner than they would've looked at you. God only _knows_ what kind of weird shit would have happened to you down there at Rockfort. And the distinction here is this," Leon said, holding up a finger for emphasis. "They would have kept _doing it_. They'd _been_ doing shit like that for years, Claire. Who knows how many people Umbrella's been responsible for the deaths of? _They_ probably don't even know—and the difference between you and them is that you're sitting here right now, beating yourself up over what you've had to do—and they're sitting in there, trying to convince everyone that they haven't done anything wrong."

They looked at each other for a moment, wordless.

"You've got a conscience," he said, his voice softer than it had been before. "And that's why this is hard for you. Those people in there—" Leon jerked his thumb over his shoulder, back at the giant edifice of a courthouse, "—really, honestly believe that they've done _nothing_ wrong."

Tearing her eyes away from his, Claire looked down at the cardigan in her lap. Her uneven fingernails picked lightly at one of the buttons, slowly but surely unraveling the thread that held it on. "Yeah, I know. I _know_ all that. I've told myself that a million times. But that…it doesn't make it any easier. I still feel screwed up inside."

Nodding, Leon ran a hand through his hair. "Yeah. Listen to me sit here and sound like I've got my shit all figured out—I feel the same way. I _know_ that's the truth, but I still can't help but feel like I'm just enabling myself, somehow."

"Uh-huh." Claire finally succeeded in picking the button off her sweater and despite having done it deliberately, swore a little under her breath before flicking it down the steps. "And in answer to your way, _way_ earlier question: yeah, Alabama was nice. _Real_ nice." She smiled over at him a little. "It was actually kind of…well, I guess _funny_ to show up on my old friends' doorsteps and be all 'Surprise! Guess who's not _dead_!'" She was laughing slightly, spreading her hands out as if she'd just jumped out of a cake. "I mean, it was funny after all the crying and hugging and stuff."

Leon was laughing a little then, too. "You wanna hear some _real_ shit? After I got into cahoots with the Feds, while you were in Europe, I finally got to go home and see my family and stuff back in Detroit." After Raccoon City, Leon and Claire had taken Sherry and lived a life on the run, existing nowhere but within their own little bubble. For all intents and purposes, Leon Scott Kennedy and Claire Babbie Redfield had been dead. "Anyways, it went pretty much the same way I'm sure your homecoming went, but my family had _really_ thought I was dead. And why shouldn't they? I mean, Raccoon City was completely destroyed, and when they didn't hear from me after it, they figured the worst."

"Yeah?" Claire prompted, looking over at him.

"I have a _headstone_," Leon said almost proudly, cocking an eyebrow at her. "Beat _that_, lady. I have a damn hole in the ground in a cemetery with nothing in it and a tombstone sitting on top of it."

Chuckling, Claire shook her head slowly. "I hope y'all took some pictures around it and stuff. That's got to be one of the more surreal moments in a person's life." She cocked an eyebrow right back at him. "So, what's it say? 'Here kind of lies Leon Scott Kennedy—yeah, we expected more too, but what're you gonna do'?"

Knocking Claire on the shoulder gently, Leon allowed himself a grin. "Nah. It says the usual about being a good son and sorely missed, and how I can keep my sister company." He noticed Claire's questioning, semi-confused look, and shrugged a little. "My only sister—older—Malloreigh died in a car wreck when I was eighteen. Her plot's right next to mine."

Claire's face contorted briefly, but meaningfully. "Ah, Jesus. I'm sorry."

Leon smiled at her again and shrugged. "'S'okay. You weren't the one driving the car." Running a hand up through the back of his hair, he felt the slightest beginnings of sweat forming on his scalp. "That's why I decided to be a cop, y'know. Mal and her friend were coming back from some field hockey event thing at the community college and some guy who'd stolen a car and decided to smoke some crack before he did it t-boned them in an intersection. I mean…" He rubbed at his chin slightly. "Mal wasn't wearing her seat belt, and neither was Katie, but _still_."

"Her friend die too?" Claire asked after a moment, quietly curious.

"Yeah. She died in surgery—Mal was dead when they got there."

A gigantic sigh worked its way out of Claire. "Must've been rough. I…I don't know what I'd do if anything ever happened to Chris. Especially something like _that_. I guess I'm kinda of the opinion that we've made it through this much shit already—for something like _that_ to ever happen would just seem unfair." Her eyes grew a little distant as she obviously pondered imaginary scenarios in her head. "I don't know what I'd do without Chris."

"Easy!" Both Claire and Leon's heads jerked back to look at the source of the sudden outburst, Chris Redfield himself. He sauntered down the steps while lighting a cigarette, plunking himself down next to Claire, effectively sandwiching her in the middle. "You'd mope for a while and then spend all my insurance money." He grinned at Claire's _please_ look and bumped his shoulder into hers, roughly. "The fuck are you two talking about out here, anyway? Plans to kill me?"

Claire looked at her brother with a suffering look that made Leon laugh a little because of its over-dramatic nature. "We _were_ havin' a relatively serious conversation before the comic relief showed up," she informed him, wiping at her forehead. "Ugh. Although I'm starting to wonder if maybe the conversation should be held inside instead of out here. It's hotter than hell out here."

"Oh, I see how it is," Chris drawled, exhaling a long stream of smoke into the air above his head. "Nobody likes a smoker. Either that or you're upset that I'm interrupting your date, Claire-bell." The older Redfield looked around Claire as she rolled her eyes and grumbled, wiggling his eyebrows at Leon. "Hands to yourself, Kennedy. I won't have you convincing my young, innocent sister to participate in various indiscretions--"

Despite Leon's laughter, he had dimly perceived that Chris Redfield was not entirely joking when he made comments of that nature—which was frequently. The man was intensely protective of his little sister, and Leon had the feeling that Chris had probably run off many a jackass suitor over the years. It seemed a likely scenario, with Claire being as attractive as she was and Chris as blustery. Chris Redfield seemed to be relatively old-fashioned about a lot of things, even if Leon didn't know him that well. Whenever Chris was around, Leon found himself alternating between trying to be the guy's friend and acting like a teenage boy wanting to make a good impression on his date's father.

Which was infinitely bizarre, because Leon wasn't sure _why_ he felt that way, really. Sure, Claire was a good-looking girl, and Leon had recently been possessed of ample leisure time to realize this, but he didn't know why Chris put him so on edge. Claire was a good friend of Leon's—hell, a war-buddy, if anything—and yes, he _was_ guilty of checking her out (who the hell wouldn't?), but this spoke more to Leon of the fact that he hadn't gotten laid in months more than anything else. He hadn't exactly had time to go out and actively pursue a sex life while he was spending twelve or thirteen hour days in a government office, attempting to orchestrate the demise of Umbrella.

He'd been ogling Claire a lot in recent months because she was around, and she was more than decent eye-candy. At this point in his life, she was the only female besides his mother that Leon had regular contact with. And more than likely, to put it simply, he was afraid that one day Chris Redfield was going to catch him staring at Claire's ass and deck him one that would be well-deserved.

Leon became dimly aware that a pseudo-argument was occurring between the two siblings while he had become lost in his mental proceedings. It sounded like Claire was delivering a severe dressing-down to her brother about sticking his nose in other people's business and _always_ figuring that _every_ guy she talked to was only out to bend her over a desk. Chris was nobly defending himself around cigarette puffs, reminding Claire that he was only looking out for her best interests and one day, when she ended up dating some douche, she'd wish that he'd been around to save her from it.

Huh. Claire, bent over a desk—_there_ was an interesting bit of imagery. Leon's mind pondered it for about two seconds before he blinked, forcing the thought out of his head. It was time to start seriously thinking about taking just _one_ night off and going out and trying to get laid.

"No offense, buddy," Chris was saying, and Leon suddenly perceived that he was being spoken to, "but I'm just looking out for Claire-bell here. She seems to forget that I _am_ a guy, therefore I know what goes through almost _all_ guys' heads."

"None taken," Leon replied with a shrug, sorely wishing that the irony of Chris making that statement didn't have to exist; that he hadn't just had some really interesting mental imagery—and good God, there it was again—of his little sister bent over a desk. "Yeah, guys are pretty much pigs," he said, looking at Claire. His face, he felt, was more apologetic than it needed to be.

"Oh, God," the girl in the middle heaved, throwing her hands up in the air. "Don't _you_ start in on me too, Kennedy. All we need is Barry to come out here right now and it'll be like _Three Men and a Baby_ all over again." Huffing, Claire struggled to stand without making a public spectacle of herself, cursing like a sailor as she did so. Chris stood and offered his help, which she finally accepted with more cursing. "I didn't think myself hungry before, but now food is sounding pretty good."

Leon nodded and stood to join the siblings, picking up his discarded jacket as he did. "Yeah. I wasn't very hungry either, but I probably _should_ eat something."

"Anything to change the topic away from my innocent, pure womanhood," Claire groused, eyeing her brother disdainfully.

Chris, for his part, turned towards the courthouse and irreverently flicked his cigarette butt through the air, watching it bounce off a sculpted white column. "Yeah, yeah. Let's round up the gang and grab something to eat. Kennedy, you game?"

"I would be, but I _am_ actually part of the consulting prosecution on this case," Leon said, staring back at the courthouse. "I should probably get back in there and go back to talking strategy with the other suits." Not to mention that he felt a little _odd_ whenever he was around all the other members of "the gang"—all people who had known each other for quite some time, in one way or another, all of whom he had just fairly recently met. They liked him, and he liked them, but Leon couldn't help but feel like a little bit of an outsider—he really only knew Claire. The Ex-STARS and the people they'd met along the way had known Leon first as a voice over the phone, a somewhat mysterious government contact that managed to keep their asses out of hot water.

"Bummer," Chris sympathized. At that moment, Jill Valentine and Rebecca Chambers exited the courthouse, pausing only in their conversation to offer waves to the group on the steps. "Well, there's some of them. I guess we'll see you after the recess, buddy." Chris started up the steps, giving Claire a light tap on the arm to suggest she move with him. For two steps she did, then fell slightly behind her brother and turned to face Leon, who offered her a little smile and a shrug with his eyebrows. A corner of her mouth returned the favour.

"Thanks for not thinking I'm insane," she said, wrapping her sweater around her arm. "You seem to be pretty good at it."

"You're not insane." Leon jerked his head up at the group of people gathering in the shade of the courthouse's portico. "You'd better get up there before Chris comes down here and accuses me of trying to put the moves on you."

A chuckle escaped Claire as she waved her hand dismissively at Leon. "Oh, that. He's just being a dumbass. He doesn't _really_ think you're on the make for me, he just likes to give you shit about it."

Leon nodded, once again wishing that the irony that was somehow present didn't have to be. "That's nice. I don't want to wake up in the middle of the night with Chris hanging over me with a knife in his hand." A whistle came from the top of the steps; Claire turned to see her brother waving her up. "You'd better go." Leon stuck his hands in the pockets of his slacks, jerking his head once again towards the group of people. "I'll see you in a while."

"Yeah." Claire nodded and waved a little, then turned and headed up the stairs towards the others.

And try as he might, Leon couldn't help but look a _little_ at the fascinating way a pencil skirt made Claire Redfield walking away from him one of the nicer things in his day. He just hoped that Chris Redfield, from his vantage point, hadn't noticed that _Leon_ had noticed.

………………

A/N: This is yet another of the scenarios I had rolling around in my head. I know it's not usually _allowed_ for the prosecution and witnesses to be cavorting about or having contact with one another outside of the courtroom, but hey. There had to be an opportunity for dialogue somewhere, right?

This is another one of the scenes I've drawn up for when Leon starts to realize that maybe—just _maybe_—he has feelings for Claire, or that he is developing them. I have a couple more of these little one-shots that are related to this one; I'll probably add them as "chapters" to this snippet, since they're kind of related.

And in case you couldn't tell, I pretty much completely made up histories for the characters. I know that neither Claire or Chris have Southern accents in the games, I just kind of always liked the idea of a Southern Redfield family. Also, the Redfield parents have been added in. Leon's back story has been kind of ad-libbed too, but I feel that it fits all right. I guess I just wanted the characters to have a little more life to them, aside from what is mentioned in the games and in the Resident Evil Umbrella Archives book (which is bad the fuck ass, by the way).

Feel free to throw rotten fruit at me, here. I'm able to write again for the first time in about a year and I'm riding high, even if it is kind of a bastardized-I-Made-Up-The-Histories-High. Heh.


	2. Risk

In the courtroom, nothing felt real. It wasn't that it was some sort of happy, fun, magical dream-land, it was that it wasn't _real_ enough. There was supposed to be blood, fire, death. There was supposed to be begging and admissions of guilt at gunpoint, there was supposed to be utter defeat and bitter, confused victory. The faces of the men sitting smugly on the witness's stand were supposed to be contorted in pain, in fear, in realization.

There was supposed to be justice. _Real_ justice. Old, wild-west type justice.

Claire didn't feel good about the people she'd killed. But God help her, she'd kill more, if she only had the chance. It was a real Catch-22, the situation she was in. There she sat, all composure and strappy-high heels, makeup and smart skirt; all she really wanted to be was covered in dirt, breathing heavy, staring down guns at the fuckers who'd done this to her.

They did this to her. They did this to _all of them_. To _everyone_. It wasn't just her, it was hundreds and thousands and even _millions_ of people they'd done this to.

Her hand, clasped in her brother's, twitched slightly. Chris tightened his hand, perceiving sadness or fear—Claire knew it for what it was. It was an itchy trigger finger, a hand that wanted to fly up and out and around the necks of every single person sitting on or around the defense's bench.

No normal person thought this way. No normal person wanted to have revenge so badly it made their hands twitch. Redfields weren't normal. When Claire's hand twitched again, it was because she _was_ tightening her grip, knowing that her brother understood. Somewhere out there was a sick bastard named Wesker, with Chris's name written all over him. This didn't necessarily make Claire feel good, but she knew things were what they were. If Chris ever found Wesker, he'd kill him. The law could do whatever they liked about that—probably throw Chris in prison—but Chris _would_ kill that man.

Claire wanted someone to kill. She wished, in a perverse fashion, that she had some sort of arch-enemy affiliated with Umbrella that she could tag and take down. It would have made dealing with her helpless rage a lot easier. Any kind of focus, any kind of purpose…any of that would have helped.

As it was, all Claire had was testifying and sitting in the courtroom, looking pretty, attempting to ignore the way men stared at her. Let 'em look. Let 'em look, long and hard.

She'd killed people. Something inside of her was gone, and she burned with desperate inner fury. Let men look. She wasn't the kind of thing you took home to mother, anymore.

And damn them, doctors and lawyers and officials who told her this was all normal, that this was a part of the process of getting better. Post-traumatic stress disorder her ass; paranoia and depression and anger issues even more her ass. Claire knew what she felt. She knew what she was capable of. Those people, they didn't know her. They tried to give her pills, tried to recommend therapy. None of that was what she needed.

She wanted things she couldn't have. And in wanting them, she didn't want them. It was _wrong_ to want such things, even if she wanted them with all her heart. To merely watch a judge tell someone they were guilty—which hadn't even happened yet—that wasn't good enough. To watch someone bleed to death slowly, that was good enough—but god fucking damnit, it was wrong and Claire _knew_ this.

Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. Claire didn't believe in all that religion bullshit, but the sentiment rang true all the same. _An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind_, Claire's brain couldn't help but remind her.

Oh Jesus, fuck, couldn't they just call lunch recess, already? Days in and days out she sat in the courtroom, watching people lie, watching defense lawyers lie artfully to protect, watched the prosecuting governmental lawyers attack as fiercely as they could. Give everyone a gun and let them settle it for themselves. Give her a gun and let her settle it for them.

To think at one point she'd perhaps been a little bit of a pacifist, a girl going to college with dreams of who knew what—maybe being an English teacher, maybe a French major. Maybe even a dual major. She hadn't even known. She probably never would.

Sure, she'd go back to school. But something inside of her was gone, and some things would never be the same. Never again an English teacher, never again a French major—now maybe something fiercer, something with more poignancy and impact.

What that was, Claire didn't know. But her little-girl dreams of college education didn't seem fitting anymore. Hooking up with guys she met at parties and sitting in diners until four am, eating greasy food in hopes of warding off the hangover, frantically worrying about group projects…it all seemed so foreign to her. To think that she had been _normal_ once didn't even seem right.

The inside of her mouth was bitter, metallic. Chris's hand was tight around hers but she could barely feel it. Claire uncrossed and re-crossed her legs, one of her heels tapping against the floor slightly.

Claire was scared she didn't know who she was, anymore.

Commotion, from the front of the courtroom; thank God, the lunch recess, finally. People began to stir. Chris was staring at her deeply, gauging her level of okay-ness. His eyes moved from her, across the man named Billy Coen, to where Jill Valentine was sitting. She'd come in late and been unable to nab her usual spot on the other side of Chris. She looked visibly shaken, and Chris's eyes darted back to Claire, almost apologetic and comically torn. Who needed him more—his baby sister or the woman he loved?

"'S'okay," Claire said, her voice sounding deceptively pleasant and feminine to her ears. "Go see her." Chris nodded slowly at her in response and stood, inching his way between the seats to Jill, whose face was immediately grateful in a quiet way.

It was cool. Claire could handle it. She was a big girl. She just needed to go outside and get some damn air, that was all.

Her heels were clicking across the marble floors loudly, quickly, with purpose; she moved quickly and her hips swung, she knew it, and people were staring. Who cared. Fuck 'em. Let 'em stare. She wasn't what they thought she was, at all. She wasn't just some cute, short little redhead with freckles and great tits; she was a one-girl army, someone who'd killed people and done things government agents couldn't do, someone who'd felt loss and anger more deeply than anyone had.

God. She'd killed people. And she felt like she could do it again.

Her hands were shaking. Her legs, at first so purposeful and strident, deposited her on a bench in the hallway, the echoes of the draining courtroom making the high-ceilinged walkway sound like an auditorium. Claire was alone; no one had even made it that far yet. She'd more or less bolted from the courtroom.

Sighing, her eyes skipped across the marble floors and then up the wall, vaguely seeing the paintings of Important American Figures doing Important Things. Up to the vaulted ceiling her eyes went, and then they moved over to the doors at the end of the long hall.

The door became strangely watery.

Pressing her shaking hands together, Claire took a shuddering breath and began the process of willing the threatening tears back. Who was _she_, anyway? Fuck, she was just a _kid_—a little girl, really. Where had all this rage come from? Where would all this rage go? Why wouldn't it just go _away_? She couldn't feel like this forever. It was going to break her down, break her _apart_ to feel like this forever.

A shuddering exhale. Claire was dimly aware of the fact that she was regulating her breathing, bordering on hyperventilating.

"_Vrooooom._" That was Leon, next to her. He'd followed her, spotted her, found her, or something. She was still looking at the doors at the end of the hall. "You set a new world record for time out of the courtroom. Congratulations."

There was a second of silence before Leon perceived that something was up, that Claire wasn't _okay_. This made her just want to get up and run—honestly, who sat down like a little blubbery child and hyperventilated?—but she was frozen in place, her brain stuck in the same repetitive bullshit it was always stuck in. Why wouldn't it all just _go away_?

"Whoa. Hey." Leon's fingers touched on her shoulder gently, carefully, brushing aside some of her loose and slightly-curled hair. "Claire. You okay?"

Her carefully regulated breathing—oh hell, why couldn't she just admit that she was fucking _hyperventilating_ and holding in sobs?—hitched a little and she hiccupped loudly. The questioning fingers on her shoulder turned into a firm yet friendly grip. "Okay. C'mon. Let's get you some fresh air."

"I'm fine," Claire insisted, even as Leon ushered her up pointedly. Her voice was warbly, cracking. "I'm _fine_." Treacherous stray tears ran down her cheeks, and she kept her head angled down, away from Leon. She couldn't even tell if he was looking at her or not, she was so flustered and confused.

"Let's just go outside," Leon said, his voice concerned at her side. She kept a curtain of her hair between them, even as a tiny hiccupping sob escaped her. Leon ushered her along more quickly, the hand on her arm turning into an arm around her back. "Okay. Okay. Almost there. We're almost outside, Claire."

The hiccups were turning into outright stifled cries, her breathing spiraling rapidly out of control. Leon pushed open one of the doors ahead of them and held it open as Claire walked through it, suddenly unsure of what to do with herself. She paced back and forth in front of the doors for a moment, then began to walk along the side of the building, hands on her hips, wild tears streaming out of her eyes. Her path was unsteady, jagged, fraught with some kind of pent-up energy. Crying quietly, she made a beeline for another bench in the distance, aware of Leon hot on her heels. She plopped herself down onto the unyielding wooden surface, keeping her face turned away and her eyes facing inanimate objects.

She was crying. She was freaking out, for lack of a better term. The bench jolted slightly as Leon sat down quickly, his hands on her shoulders, turning her around forcefully to face him—only Claire wouldn't allow herself to look him in the face. She was _Claire_. She didn't turn into sobbing wrecks. She was supposed to be stronger than this, some kind of tough wonder-girl.

She'd killed people.

A soft gasping cry escaped her, except she kind of mostly choked on it since she couldn't really breathe.

"Claire. Claire. Calm down. You're hyperventilating." Leon's hands were smoothing over her shoulders, her arms, quickly, almost frantically. "Claire. _Claire. _Listen to me. Slow down and breathe. Breathe through your nose, take deep, slow breaths."

She heard him but couldn't hear him. The tears still came.

"_Claire_. Breathe. Just stop for a second and take one good, long breath through your nose. Jesus, Claire, you're going to pass out. You're white as a sheet. Through your nose." He was tilting her head back slightly, more or less forcing her to suck in air through her nose, even as she gasped. "There you go. C'mon, one more. There you go, just like that. Breathe slowly, through your nose." His hands, impossibly gentle, brushed the hair away from her neck and shoulders, her face. "Thatagirl. Nice and slow."

"I just—they—I want—" The voice that came out of her mouth sounded unfamiliar to even her, wild and scared and fierce, like a cornered cat. Leon gripped her around her shoulder again, pulling her to him, hugging her tightly. "They—"

"I know. I know, Claire. Just hush and try to calm down." His grasp was so comforting, so knowing. Claire sobbed, her hands balling into fists, her face twisting with the effort of holding in angry screams, her muscles tensing and relaxing in rapid succession. Leon held her through it all, his hand grabbing one of her tightly balled ones and working it into an open palm, linking his fingers through hers. Still she cried, and she was dimly aware of the fact that he was rocking her like a small child, shushing her all the while.

"I know. I feel the same way," Leon said, his voice against the top of her hair. "I feel the same way, Claire. It's alright."

Eventually her tears began to fade, her body feeling exhausted with the effort. She'd had a good long cry, several minutes at least. Quieting, she fell semi-limp in Leon's grasp, sniffling fiercely and blinking at the ground, suddenly feeling very stupid and confused. "I'm sorry," she breathed. Just like that, it was passing.

"Sorry? Jesus, Claire, what're you sorry for?" he asked, giving her a quick squeeze. "It's _okay_. That obviously needed to come out of you, and it did. That's okay."

"I'm just—" Claire brought the hand that wasn't still loosely entwined with Leon's up to her face, wiping away trails of tears—of course, by now, the makeup she hated wearing was probably smeared and runny and disgusting. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that."

"You think I thought you did?" He asked her in disbelief. "No more apologies—I'm not upset or inconvenienced, Claire."

"Ugh. How ridiculous," Claire said by way of reply, as she wiped her face, still keeping her face turned away from his. "Big bad Claire Redfield, crying like a little baby. I mean—you shouldn't have to play nursemaid to me, here. No one should."

"_Stop_." Leon started to turn her face up from the ground towards him and Claire resisted, feeling rather _ashamed_ that anyone see her in such a state. "Hey, none of that, either. Look at me." Claire settled for at least moving her face upwards some and fixing her eyes on his shoulder. Leon seemed to accept this and sighed. "Don't feel like you have to hold stuff like that in all the time. No one is going to be annoyed or put out if you need to lose it for a minute."

Claire pursed her lips. "It's dangerous to let all that out," she said slowly. "If I let stuff like that out, I'm gonna act on the things in my head. I can't do that."

"It's dangerous to hold all that _in_," he corrected, albeit in a gentle manner. "You'll turn yourself into a ticking time bomb if you try to keep it all stuffed down inside of you."

"Everything about me has changed," Claire said, dimly aware of the fact that their conversation was incredibly disjointed, jumping from one subject to another. "I'm not the same person, Leon. I'm completely different and it's not different in a good way."

Leon sighed. "_Nothing_ about you has changed, Claire."

This statement succeeded in raising some manner of strange ire within Claire, and her eyes finally snapped over to meet his, narrowed in accusation. "Are you _blind_? _Everything_ about me is—"

"Nothing _important_ about you has changed," Leon interrupted, his voice a notch louder and very firm. "You're still you. Bad things have happened along the way, but you're still you."

"I'm…_violent_. I've killed people and I'm capable of doing it again."

"You are nothing less than what you were when you came to Raccoon City, and you are nothing more, fundamentally. You're still _you_." Leon shook his head slightly and kept his eyes locked on hers, pointedly. "I'm not convinced you're some kind of cold-blooded monster now, Claire, and you're not _going_ to convince me of it. Why are you so bent on convincing _yourself_ of it?"

She didn't have an answer for that, not one she wanted to voice, anyway. She could say that it was because believing that she was somehow devoid of a consciousness and pity made it easy for her to explain why she had murderous thoughts, why she was filled with all-consuming anger. Claire didn't know if saying that would make any sense, or if it would be right.

"You're letting those people in that room back there do what they want—which is make _you_ feel like you're the one who did something wrong," Leon went on, his voice low and almost urgent. "You're letting them have that power over you, and they shouldn't. You shouldn't _let_ them."

"I can't go back and unkill all the people I killed," Claire said, once again skipping to another topic abruptly.

"But you would if you could, and that's why you're not _changed_, Claire. You may not feel like it, but you're still human after all. Hell, you wouldn't have killed anyone in the first place if you hadn't had to."

Sighing, Claire let her eyes wander from Leon's over to a tree near them. "I _didn't_ have to. Nobody _made_ me do those things. I did them on my own, my own free will," she said, her eyes still on the tree.

"Bullshit." His use of the word, as pointed as he'd made it, turned Claire's eyes back to him in confusion. "I call bullshit. That's a pretty short-end-of-the-stick type deal to hand a person, you know, most of the situations you got dealt through this whole thing. Sure, you could have not killed anyone, but then you wouldn't be sitting here talking to me. Anyone who's got a choice between being hunted and murdered and doing something about it is going to choose to do something about it, Claire. You got handed _ultimatums,_ Claire, you didn't just decide to go out and start randomly slaying people. I don't think the citizens of Raccoon City would have left you alive for very long if you'd decided to negotiate with them instead of killing them. The same goes for Umbrella employees."

His face softened a little and he looked at her like she was a particularly difficult jigsaw puzzle that he was attempting to solve, all the pieces laid out on a kitchen counter, only the corners built. "I'm sorry, but I'm not willing to sit idly by and watch you rationalize yourself into condemnation, even if you are. To me, that's letting _them_ win, and I'm not about to let them win _you_ after all the shit you've been through to keep yourself unconquered."

"Leon…" She sighed, faltering a little under his direct gaze. Her eyes fell to her hands in her lap, loosely clasped together. "You can't fight the battle for me."

"I know. I can fight it for me, though." His face was blatantly honest and direct. "Like I said, I'd take it as a personal loss. You, Sherry, my family, my friends—you guys are…" Leon trailed off for a moment, unsure how to continue. "Think of it as _Risk_. You guys are all things I _hold_, things that are important to me, things that I consider _mine_. You all have your own battles to fight, but I do too—and my major battle, whether or not I want it to be, is with Umbrella. Losing you to them, even in mind, would be like losing…"

Part of Claire was somehow offended at being likened to a possession, but most of her saw where he was coming from—even if her independent values bristled a little at being treated in such a chauvinistic, old-fashioned way. But she could still definitely understand what he meant; there were people and places in her life that were _hers_, and if people fucked with them, then they were fucking with _Claire_. "…all of Asia? You know, in _Risk_?"

Leon broke his determined face to hazard a little smile at her. "Nah, you don't _want_ Asia. Asia's the kiss of death—too big, too many fronts to defend. If you can't hold Ukraine, you're screwed." His face grew a little serious again. "Losing you to Umbrella would be like being unable to secure Australia early in the game, or losing North America in the middle of the game. North America gets really important as time goes on, you know."

Claire hazarded a tiny smile of her own, despite Leon's newly serious look. "I can't believe I'm being compared to strategic land masses. If it weren't so goddamned _weird_ and chest-thumpingly male, it might have been kind of _romantic_, even."

Leon's face lost its seriousness as if he was snapping out of something and then wore an _oh please_ smile and an eye roll. "Yeah, well, now you know why I don't have a girlfriend. I'm still eleven years old in my head, playing _Risk_ in my cousin's basement. But hey, I got a smile." His own smile widened. "Claire Redfield is no cold-hearted killer if she can find humour in jokes about_ board games_, for Christ's sake."

Claire had to hand it to Leon—the man had an uncanny knack for being that down-to-earth nice guy, the guy who could talk sense and even some cheer into _anyone_, no matter what their situation was. Sure, the doubt and fear and anger were still in her head, but they were pushed out of the limelight for the moment. Had Leon always been so capable of putting rational thought into people's heads? No, of course he hadn't, she knew that; he'd come a long way since the confused, nervous, easily flustered cop he'd been in Raccoon City. "I'm not entirely convinced. I think it'll take me a long time to be entirely convinced, if I ever even reach it. But hey, even a killer can smile, you know."

Leon was serious again, his hand on her shoulder, his finger pointing at her. "Seriously, Claire, no more of it. You're tougher than that. Don't just roll over and let them make you feel like that. It's only going to make you crazy." He dropped his finger. "Believe me. You'll be crazy."

"I've always been crazy," she informed him, shrugging slightly. "It just didn't _bother_ me before. But still…" She had to cave for the moment. He wasn't going to drop it, and neither was she. They were both good at that, being stubborn. "…okay, okay. I get it. Hold Ukraine, and make sure not to lose North America in the middle of it all. I'll work on it."

"And don't give up land unless you know you can retake it whenever you want," Leon added, obviously talking about _Risk_ but obviously not. "You can give it up as a feint, lure people into thinking you're running scared, but don't do it if you're _actually_ running scared. Do it because you're going to come back later and stomp the shit out of the opposing army, when they've been lured into thinking they're sitting pretty."

"Okay," Claire said, nodding at him in perfect seriousness. A twinkle arose in her eye, though, despite the relative lack of levity in the conversation. "Promise me that tomorrow you'll teach me a life lesson that's somehow related to _Parcheesi_ or _Mouse Trap_."

Leon barked a laugh, looking away and shaking his head, running his hand along his jaw. "Fine. But only if you promise me you're going to go get cleaned up. The smeary raccoon-eyed look doesn't do you justice."


	3. Brotherly Love

"Hey. I need to talk to you."

The sound of Chris Redfield's voice, friendly-serious, made Leon turn. A strange feeling overcame Leon, one that bordered on guilt. Somehow, he felt like he'd been _caught_ doing something, even if he was just walking across the parking lot. He turned fully to face the other man, his suit jacket hanging uselessly from his hand, his face momentarily blank and confused. Pulling it together, Leon shrugged with his eyebrows. "Okay," he said, looking over at the other man evenly. "What's up?"

"Where're ya headed?" Chris asked, indicating the parking lot and the vehicles around them. "You just grabbing something, or…?"

Leon stuck one of his hands in his pocket and shook his head. "Uh, no, actually. I'm headed over to one of the offices to drop some files off for the guys there." His teeth bit into his tongue for a moment, weighing his options. "You're welcome to ride along, if you want. I'm going to be coming back here afterwards to pick up Donaldson and Gervais to take them back to the _other_ offices, so we can get our own cars."

A small smile spread on Chris's face. "You drivin' some kind of big, fancy government car?"

"A big black GMC Denali," Leon replied, smiling a little himself. "You know, one of those big tough Feeb SUVs we always roll around in."

"Count me in," Chris said, his smile growing for a moment as he walked up to Leon. "They let you take those things home for the weekend or anything, ever?"

Leon grinned and shook his head. "No. But make no mistake, I abuse my privileges every chance I get. Technically they're only supposed to be used for government business, but who says that government business doesn't entail me going to lunch and driving over to Best Buy?"

They were at the discussed Denali, Leon unlocking the doors. Both men climbed in and shut their doors, Chris looking around and giving a whistle. "Hot damn," he said, slouching in his seat a little. "Leather seats and everything. No _wonder_ this damn government's going to financial hell in a handbasket."

Leon chuckled a little and started the truck, checking the backseat to make sure the box of files was there like Gervais had said. "Yeah. I mean, were the ass-warming seats and extra-deluxe stereo system _really_ necessary?"

Chris made a little _pshaw_ noise and looked out the window, tugging his seatbelt into place and fastening it as Leon shifted into drive and moved out of the parking space. "Damn cushy government jobs," he grumbled, although it sounded as if he wasn't _entirely_ serious. "I coulda been high-ballin' it in the Air Force if I hadn't gotten my ass kicked out."

Against his better judgement, Leon had to ask. "Why'd you get kicked out, anyway? I mean, shit, you'd been in for…what, three, three and a half years?" Leon knew that he may have been _acquainted_ and _friendly_ with the man in the vehicle with him, but he really didn't _know_ the guy. Being Claire's brother had given him immediate carte blanche, but Leon somehow felt as if he should really know the guy better than he did—or at least try to know him better.

"Got a mouth on me," Chris replied. "And a temper something fierce. I was constantly in trouble, even if I was a model fucking pilot. It got to be a little too much after a while. I got into a…heated _discussion_ with one of my superior officers one day. It hadn't been the first time. One thing led to another and one thing leads to another, and next thing I know I'm gettin' hauled off dude and he's on the ground, missing a lot of teeth and a good portion of his face."

_Note to self: don't piss Chris off._ Leon looked over at the older man and nodded, pulling up to a stoplight. "Shit. That's rough. Sometimes you just see red, I guess." _But then again, it seems that your very **existence** pisses Chris off sometimes. Dumb fucking luck, every time the guy comes looking for his sister, he finds her in cahoots with you._

"Heh. Yeah, shit happens." Chris reclined his seat a little, using the rocker button on his door panel to roll his window down a crack. "Can I smoke in here?" he asked, already reaching into the pocket of his slacks. It hadn't taken Chris very long after court had been adjourned for the day to lose his jacket and his tie, and then unbutton his shirt and roll up the shirtsleeves. He looked like some kind of laid-back, relatively well-dressed con-man.

"We're not supposed to," Leon began, "but everyone does anyway, and no one ever seems to say anything about it. So go ahead." In the corner of his eye he saw Chris light up thankfully, taking a long drag and then exhaling a mammoth cloud of smoke.

"So how you suits feelin' about the way the trial's goin'?" Chris asked, ashing his cigarette out the window before tossing the pack up onto the dash. "I mean, you've got 'em, but you see 'em trying to stall more in the future?"

Leon had the distinct feeling that Chris was making small talk; that he was avoiding something that he _really_ wanted to talk about, instead making small talk in an attempt to get Leon to either relax or drop his guard and do something fucking stupid. _Kind of one in the same_, Leon thought while keeping his eyes on the road. "We feel pretty good. There's just no way that the metric _fuckload_ of evidence—paper trails, witness accounts, testimony from people who've turned State's evidence, security footage, phone calls, computer files, _virus samples_—is going to be ignored. I mean, hell. The defense is getting nervous, we can tell. They're motioning for every delay they can possibly motion for, but I think the bench is getting tired of it. Almost all of it's been turned down in the last few weeks."

Chris ran a hand over his spiky hair, looking at his cigarette. "Yeah. I mean—damn, the testimonies should be enough alone, if you ask me. I mean, I guess we aren't supposed to do this kind of shit, but Claire and I really had to sit down for a few nights in a row and get our stories about all the shit that happened in Antarctica straight. We had to be able to, y'know, put it all together in somethin' that didn't contradict itself all the time because we were separated a lot."

Leon nodded. "Yeah, yeah. You've provided a lot of valuable testimony, Chris. I mean…_really_ fucking valuable. You have no idea how much all of it helps—you, Jill, and Barry were smart to start keeping journals right after the Spencer incident and from there on out. Not only did it keep the facts fresh in your minds, but it provided a kind of…verification of the accounts, that so many people had seen the same things."

"Yeah." Chris sighed this, letting out a jet of smoke. "Yeah, I feel pretty good about it," he continued, smoke puffing out of his mouth with every word. "And everyone else's testimony?"

"Solid," Leon said, shaking his head slowly and raising his eyebrows, as if he'd been trying to find fault with it himself. "I think some of the people on the jury may be a little wary of trusting Billy Coen, but that's just the nature of it. He's been pardoned and cleared, and there's an official investigation into what happened in Africa, but the moment the defense brought all that shit up…I think his testimony was really probably negated, at that point."

"I can't believe the judge allowed them to bring that shit up," Chris growled, ashing his cigarette with hard flicks out the window. "That was a long time ago and it has _nothing_ to do with Umbrella."

Leon drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. "Well, yeah. For whatever reason, the judge allowed it. Maybe he was just feeling bad for the defense because everyone's been so solid on the stand, and all the evidence is so damning. Throw 'em a bone, or something."

Chris was silent, obviously in agreement and not thinking it worth discussing any further. He flicked his cigarette out the window and left it halfway open, leaving the breeze to ruffle Leon's hair as they drove along. The silence stretched out for a few minutes, and it made Leon uncomfortable. It made him want to reach for the radio controls or start talking, but somehow doing that would be showing that Chris was getting to his nerves, giving the older man the upper hand.

Claire _was_ always telling him that Chris, no matter what kind of down-South good-ole boy he seemed to be, was pretty good at getting people to sweat when he wanted them to. Chris definitely seemed to be trying to do _something_, he was quiet, but there was a heaviness to the quiet, as if he had something he wanted to say but was waiting until the right time to say it.

Part of the situation pissed Leon off. He was a big fucking boy, no matter what Chris Redfield thought, and he didn't really like some older-brother type trying to psych him out, trying to intimidate him. Part of the situation seemed natural and fairly legitimate to Leon—Chris had a lot to be wary of. The man didn't trust authority, really, it seemed, and even though Leon was younger than him, he was still _The Law_.

These were all side issues to the _real_ elephant in the corner that no one wanted to acknowledge. Leon didn't want to admit it to himself, even internally, but he had a pretty damn good idea as to what this was going to be about, what _a lot_ of whatever Chris Redfield had to say to him would be about—Claire. Once again, Leon was split on the issue. Part of him wanted to tell Chris to fuck off; Claire was Leon's _friend_, and even if his thoughts and feelings towards her were starting to stray into some kind of dangerous grey area, she was still his _friend_. He wouldn't do anything to disrespect her or harm her in any way, never intentionally. The fuck kind of douchebag did Chris figure him for? The other part of Leon understood completely—he was a guy that Claire was very comfortable around and good friends with. Chris didn't know Leon all that well, and Leon _had_ a sister too, at one point in time. Sure, she'd been older, but it hadn't stopped him and his other brothers from pulling the overly-protective macho act a lot.

Leon decided to push the issue. Sitting in silence wasn't his style. "Anything else besides the case you wanna talk to me about?" he asked, conversational but serious.

Chris nodded and reached for his smokes again, lighting up another one. It _kind_ of made Leon wish he still smoked. At least it would have given him something to do with his hands aside from grip the wheel. Chris took a few moments to reply, and then turned to look at Leon, unblinking and serious. "What's going on between you and my sister?" he asked bluntly.

Internally, Leon could breathe a partially relieved sigh. At least he knew what this was all about. "Chris, nothing is _going on_ between us. We're just friends. We've been through a lot of the same things together and it's more or less formed a bond."

Chris was still staring at him evenly, attempting to gauge the validity of the statement. "Just friends, huh?"

"Yeah." Leon refused to look nervous, or to act guilty. "Just friends."

"Claire's young, and no matter what she says, she's real fuckin' vulnerable right now," Chris continued, looking out the window. "I don't like not having her in my sight, down in Richmond. I ain't sayin' I don't _trust_ you, Leon, but I am saying I'm suspicious of _all_ guys who suddenly become my little sister's best friend."

The statement—and the implied theory—set Leon's teeth on edge, a little. It was going to get him nowhere if he got angry, so he stuffed it back down and unclenched his teeth. "Chris, if you're saying that I'm _trying_ to get closer to Claire so I can bag her when she's down, then you're barking up the wrong tree. Claire is my _friend_. I wouldn't do that to her—or anyone else, for that matter. I know you don't know me all that well, but I'm _not_ that kind of guy. It's not in me."

Chris was silent again for a few moments, rubbing at his stubble, choosing his next words. "All I'm sayin' is I've never seen my sister this close to a guy before, and it sprang up pretty damn quick. She talks about you a lot, and she's spending a hell of a lot of time with you. I'm just sayin' that if you're dropping some kind of hints or sending her some kinds of little signs, then you need to knock it off. Claire doesn't need that kind of shit going on right now."

Leon's teeth were grinding again. What kind of fucker did Chris Redfield take him for? "Look, Chris. Claire and I were close before, when we were on the run from Umbrella together, and nothing happened between us then. It isn't as if we're _suddenly_ becoming close now—we spent a lot of time apart, and now we're back together and hanging out because we're _friends_." Leon didn't know how many times he was going to have to bring up the word friends and emphasize it so. "I'm not dropping any kind of hints or trying to lead your sister along into anything. I'm _not_ that kind of person."

"She's my baby sister," Chris said with quiet intensity, looking over at Leon. "I'm just looking out for her."

Leon unclenched his teeth a little, hoping it wasn't noticeable to the man sitting next to him. "I know. I had a sister, too. She passed away years ago, but my brothers and I always did the same for her. But…Claire's a smart girl. Do you think she'd be hanging out with me if I was a bastard? She'd have picked up on it a long time ago and told me to go fuck myself."

Chris was still looking at Leon. "I know. She's smart, but she's young and infamous for making bad decisions." He exhaled through his nose, smoke billowing around his face. "And she may be your friend, Leon, but I ain't blind. You _do_ look at her."

There was a moment of silence. Leon had hoped—hoped in vain, it seemed—that Chris Redfield would never notice that Leon was having an increasingly hard time keeping his eyes on proper places on Claire. Just what he needed.

"She hasn't noticed. But I have. I ain't really sure what to think of that, honestly," Chris went on, ashing his cigarette. "I don't know how I feel about the guy who's professing up and down that he's _not_ that guy, that he's just my sister's _friend_…I don't know how I feel about that guy checking my sister out when she ain't looking."

Leon looked over to the pack of cigarettes on the dash and reached for it suddenly, noticing the way Chris's eyebrow arched but not caring. Depressing the Denali's lighter, he resumed staring back into traffic for a second as he waited for it to pop out. When it did, he lit his cigarette and exhaled, wincing a little. "I haven't had one of these things in months," he said offhandedly, looking at the cigarette. "Okay, Chris, I'm going to be completely honest with you, here. I've caught _myself_ looking at Claire, and I am not particularly fond of it myself. Your sister is a pretty girl, I'm sure you've noticed this. Apparently I've noticed it too, or at least some part of me has. But she is my _friend_—a good friend, one of the few I can still count having. I would _never_ do anything to hurt her or compromise her, ever."

"Then why're you lookin' at her?" Chris asked bluntly, not giving up an inch of room.

"Honestly?" Leon asked, raising his eyebrows and exhaling, "Probably because it's been a _long_ time since I've had a woman in my life, and all of a sudden I'm around Claire nearly twenty-four seven, and my eyes don't know the difference, even if my mind and gut do." It was kind of a shit reason, but it was the honest truth. "I can't help it. I'm sorry. I really am trying to not do it, but sometimes I mess up. I don't want to offend your sister or hurt her feelings, or make her feel weird. But sometimes I guess I just can't help but look."

Chris turned away, blowing a stream of smoke out the window, putting a foot up on the dash easily. "That doesn't exactly set a man's mind at ease, Kennedy," Chris replied, evenly. "It actually kind of makes him wonder _more_."

"Yeah, I figured you'd say that." Leon chortled a little and shook his head, looking at his hand on the steering wheel. "I'd say it too. I'm just trying to be honest with you and not feed you a big line of shit, Chris. Claire's my friend and you're her older brother. I don't want you to think I'm a fucker, but I don't want you breathing down my neck, either."

"Mind your eyes and I won't have to," Chris said nonchalantly, but the serious intent was understood.

Leon swallowed and nodded slowly, then looked over at Chris. His face was trying hard to frown, but he wasn't going to let it—_damnit, I am **not** going to get into a whose-dick-is-bigger-battle with this guy, of all people._ "Your concern is appreciated and well-warranted, Chris, but I'm a big boy, okay? I can keep my hands to myself, and I _will_—not because you're asking me to, but because I _respect_ Claire. She's a pretty girl. But she's way more of an amazing person, and I value her a lot more for that than for her looks."

Chris flicked his cigarette out the window and resumed rubbing the stubble on his jaw slowly, studying some unknown point on the horizon. "I know what you're trying to say, Kennedy, and I applaud you for it. But the last guy that gave me this same kind of speech about Claire ended up dating her and making a real fucking mess of it, one that I had to deal with by showing up at the kid's house with a baseball bat."

Leon chortled again, but it was without mirth. "Look, man, if you're trying to tell me that you're going to show up at _my_ doorstep with a baseball bat, I really wish you'd reconsider it." This situation was getting dangerously close to erupting into some kind of full-blown argument or fight, and that was the last thing Leon wanted, even if Chris was pushing all of his buttons at once. He had the strangest feeling that if he were to go off on Chris, that Chris would just use it as justification to Claire as to _why_ Leon was a jerk, and why she shouldn't hang out around him. "I don't want to be your enemy, man. Your sister's my friend. I'm having a hard time understanding why I can't be yours."

"I'm havin' a hard time understanding why you can't keep your eyes off Claire if you're supposed to be this stand-up guy and all," Chris countered, with a humourless chuckle of his own. "You're sayin' one thing and acting the other, Kennedy. That _really_ concerns me. If you wanna earn my trust and my friendship, pal, you need to try to keep your eyes off my little sister's ass."

Leon couldn't look over at Chris. If he looked over, he was going to go off. "And what about all the times I _saved_ her ass, huh? How about all the information I gave you, and your friends? How about all the times I kept you out of the hands of the government, kept you out of jail, fed you intel?" Leon paused for a moment, knowing he was dangerously close to losing his temper. "None of that's good enough to earn your trust? I've almost landed _myself_ in court-marshal before because of all the things I've done for you. And now, you catch me_ unintentionally_ looking at Claire once or twice and I'm the big bad wolf?"

The anger was right there, right under the surface, trying to break its way out. "If so, Chris, you'd better take another look around. A _good_ fucking look. I respect Claire. I value her as a friend. I'm not completely innocent as a man, true, but there are a _lot_ bigger and badder wolves out there who would chew your sister up and spit her out. You're so damn busy watching _me_ that you _aren't_ watching half of the other people in the courtroom who really aren't trying to hide the fact that they're staring at your sister. Hell, half the people who are on _your side_ spend a good amount of time looking at her, too. But have you given Carlos Oliviera or Billy Coen this talk? Probably not."

Leon was on a roll, flicking what was left of his cigarette out the window, angrily. "The difference between them and me is that you don't _like_ me. I'm some desk-working G-man, I'm _The Man_, I'm the kind of guy you've hated all your life. And it just fucking _burns you up_ that I'm friends with your sister, doesn't it?"

"Them's some words, Kennedy." Chris Redfield was stern, his eyes and face unsmiling. There was ill-checked anger broiling within his eyes, easily visible. "If you were anyone else, I would have told you to pull this thing over about two minutes ago so I could get out and pound your ass." Chris ignored Leon's _heh_ noise and continued, just as austerely. "You're an _alright_ guy. I don't know you. All I know of you is from what Claire tells me, and she seems to think you're hot shit, so that'll have to do for me. I don't want to have to be your enemy, son, but I _will_ be if you don't get your shit sorted out and treat my sister right—like you say she is—like your _friend_."

"Did you just call me 'son'?" Leon asked, with an incredulous, humourless laugh. "Whatever. I've been nothing but a perfect gentleman to Claire, but it seems like no matter what I do, you're going to see me as some kind of twisted predator, out to get into her pants and then heave her overboard." Leon turned to look at Chris, his eyes boring into the other man's for a moment. "I'm _not that guy_." Looking away, he attempted to force calm on himself and keep his eyes on the road. "You think I am, but I'm not. Believe me or don't believe me, that's up to you. But I am _not_ going to sit here and be lectured like some horny sixteen-year-old, man. It's just fucking insulting."

"So there's nothing going on." It was meant to be a question, Leon could tell, but Chris said it in a very flat, enforcing kind of way.

"_No_," Leon said, finally, in exasperation. "And let me tell you what, Chris, even if there _was_, number one—it wouldn't be any of your damn business, and number two—you _still_ wouldn't have anything to worry about. Claire's an important person in my life. She's an important person, period. I wouldn't treat her wrong or disrespect her in any way. What's more is that I _believe_ that she's capable of making her own sound decisions, and I think she's got a good head on her shoulders. I've seen her make better decisions, harder decisions than someone twice her age has ever had to make. She's fucking _smart, _okay? It seems like you need to wake up and realize that. She's your kid sister, I know, but she can't ride around on your shoulders forever, man."

Chris's mouth turned downwards sharply, his eyes narrowing. "Don't tell me how to act around my little sister, Kennedy."

Leon looked over briefly, returning the intimidating glance. "Don't tell _me_ how to act around my friends, _Redfield_." Leon pulled up outside the security checkpoint to the building and threw the vehicle into park, looking over at Chris. "Look. I said it before, I'll say it again. I don't want to be your fucking enemy, Chris."

"I don't want you to have to be my enemy, either." Chris's face was set, unsmiling. "It's kind of up to you."

"Oh, Jesus," Leon said, rubbing his hands over his face. "Are you _really_ gonna make it be that way, man?" He gave a little laugh that was without any sort of humour. "Don't fucking do this to me."

The sound of the passenger door opening made Leon lift his head from his hands, looking over at Chris. The older man was swinging his legs out of the truck, alighting on the ground. "I didn't do _anything_ to you. I'll have the decency to find my own way back, though." He slammed the door behind him without a second look back and started walking down the road towards the noises and lights of cars swooping back and forth and the next intersection. Leon watched him go for a moment, considering hailing him down and telling him to get back in the truck, for Christ's sake—but he couldn't. He didn't _want_ to.

Chris had left his smokes behind. Leon looked at them, then looked at the rapidly retreating figure of Chris. Exhaling heavily, he rolled down the passenger window and shouted to Chris. "Hey! You want your smokes, or what?" he called, watching Chris pivot backwards to face him.

"Keep 'em," Chris hollered back, trotting backwards. "You need 'em." He turned and was headed away from Leon again.


	4. Rapunzel

Once the door to his apartment swung open, Leon was immediately confronted with the sight of Claire's duffel bag on his couch. Normally this wouldn't make him pause in the doorway for a second, but it did that day because it looked as if her bag had more or less _exploded_, spewing contents of Claire's clothing-life all over his couch and living room floor.

He walked into the apartment, closing the door behind him. The sound of the bathtub running from the apartment's single bathroom drifted down the hallway. The bathroom door was open, which gave Leon another moment of pause. He sincerely hoped that Claire wasn't actually in the process of taking a bath, and had forgotten to close the door—or worse yet, was gallivanting about his apartment naked.

"Hey," he called out, half-greeting half-warning. No reply. He tossed his keys onto the coffee table, noting the pair of Claire's socks sitting on it, and then set down the stack of files he was carrying as well. "Claire?" he tried again as he removed his suit coat and loosened his tie. Still no reply.

The trial had been going on for weeks at that point. Today had been one of the days where both prosecution and defense were sequestered in their separate quarters, reviewing and re-reviewing all the documents and files and testimonies. The defense had been granted a slight extension to try to get some of their shit together, although, at this point, anyone who had a brain could tell they were just stalling for time.

It was surreal to Leon. He always figured that the demise of Umbrella would have involved lots of guns, explosions, and death. All of that had happened along the way, but now it seemed the downfall and eventual death of the corporation would come in the courtroom.

It had been one of the days where there had been no actual testimony on either side, but tomorrow it would be back to business as usual. To put it mildly, it had started to become somewhat of a pain in the ass for the witnesses and other testifiers to have to shuttle back and forth between _wherever_ and DC every day—Claire among those testifiers. She lived in Richmond, which wasn't _too_ horribly far away, but still a healthy 100-something mile drive either way.

At some point, Leon had offered to let her crash on the futon in his spare room when she needed to, as opposed to driving back and forth all the time with her brother or someone else. This actually worked out relatively well, since Leon had come to find out that Claire did not have a vehicle of her own at the moment and actually only possessed a motorcycle license. It was something she'd mentioned rectifying in the near future, but she'd never even _driven_ a car, let alone gotten a regular driver's license.

And so it came to pass that recently, about four days a week, Claire Redfield more or less lived in his apartment with him. Leon alternated between being secretly happy about the arrangement and secretly wanting to tear his hair out in frustration.

Removing his shoulder holsters and guns, Leon set them on the counter that lined the window to the kitchen. He pulled his wallet out of his pocket, along with his ID card, and tossed those onto the counter as well. Still nothing from Claire, who was presumably in the bathroom. Moving to the fridge, Leon extracted a beer and noticed that there were considerably fewer of them than there had been that morning when he'd left. There was also half a sandwich from the deli around the corner that hadn't been there, either.

Taking a swig from his beer, Leon looked up at the ceiling and asked God for strength. Today was obviously going to be one of those tearing his hair out in frustration days. It wasn't that Claire did anything wrong. It wasn't that he disliked having her in his apartment. It was the complete _opposite_ of that. In recent months, as life had started to return to some semblance of normalcy for all who'd tangled with Umbrella, Leon had become uncomfortably aware of the fact that Claire was not just his fellow survivor, strategist, and friend, but that she was a _girl_. A beautiful one, at that.

She was a girl and he was starting to like her in the way that normal guys liked normal girls. In retrospect, Leon was not surprised that it hadn't happened sooner; life had been too insane and consumed with survival and fighting for it to happen. Plus, Claire had run off to play commando in Europe and had been imprisoned for a while; her absence hadn't been particularly helpful to any kind of romantic feelings. Leon lived and breathed at the beck and call of the US government—he was not ashamed to admit that he had little to no life outside of work. And, on top of it all, for the first few months after Raccoon City when he and Claire _had_ been together, he'd been preoccupied with the memory of Ada on top of all the trying-to-stay-hidden and taking-care-of-Sherry bullshit.

Half his beer was gone before he knew it. Leon sorely wished he had more trial preparations to complete that evening just so he would have something to distract him from Claire's presence. He decided to make his way down the hallway and very _carefully_ figure out whatever the hell was going on in the bathroom. Stopping outside the door but being cautious to make sure he couldn't see anything in the mirror, Leon reached out and knocked on the open door loudly. "Hey. You alive in here?"

"Oh! Yeah," came Claire's reply. She sounded muffled and a little harried, attempting to be heard over the water. "Uh, sorry. I didn't hear you come in."

"You want me to shut this door?" Leon asked, already reaching for the door handle. "Or are you decent?"

"No, no," Claire replied. "I'm decent. You don't have to shut it."

Now Leon's curiosity was piqued, even if it shouldn't have been—she was in the damn bathroom, he should have just gone away and left it at that. "What're you doing, anyway?" he asked, and boldly leaned into the bathroom, looking around the corner of the wall.

"Washing my hair," Claire said, which became readily apparent once Leon could see into the bathroom. He still felt like he should have probably gotten the fuck out of there, but his legs wouldn't obey and he stayed. The shower curtain was pushed to the opposite side of the rod, and Claire was kneeling with her back to him, bent over the side of the bathtub, wedged between the side and the toilet. Her head was under the bathtub faucet. An open beer sat on the counter next to the sink. A towel was lying on the floor behind her, apparently ready for use whenever she was done.

"Wouldn't taking a shower be…easier?" Leon asked, after taking in the scene.

"There's no point," Claire answered, sounding strained as she engaged in the process of wetting down her ample amounts of hair. "All my clothes are dirty."

Ah. That explained the eruption of Mt. St. Duffel Bag in his living room. Taking a drink of his beer, Leon nodded. "There's a Laundromat around the corner, you know."

"Nope. Had no idea." Moving her head away from the faucet and bumping her knee on the side of the tub, Claire swore and groped semi-blindly for the bottle of shampoo. Grabbing it, she squeezed what appeared to be an inordinately large amount into her palm and set to work carefully washing her hair. "So," she began conversationally from under her curtain of wet hair, "how'd it go today?"

Shrugging, Leon watched in fascination as she methodically began to work the shampoo through her hair, carefully piling the long, wet mass of it on top of her head without flinging water. "Boring. They're stalling—that defense knows they don't have shit. Those guys are going to spend the rest of their lives in military prisons."

"It's too good for them," Claire said bitterly, her head slowly but surely becoming engulfed in a mass of suds. "I want 'em all to fry in the chair. That's probably not going to happen, though."

Leon nodded with a sigh. "Yeah, probably not." Claire's shirt was riding up in the back because of the angle she was bent over at; most of it was hanging uselessly around her neck and shoulders, getting wet and sudsy. The pale skin of her lower back was exposed, revealing the little bumps of her spine and a pretty impressive slash of a scar. "The government will probably just put them away forever."

Claire snickered a little. "Too bad the trial's not in Alabama," she said. "It'd last about three days and at the end of it all those bastards would be hauled into someone's backyard and hanged."

"Nah. Shoulda pushed for Texas," Leon quipped, although he was busy noticing that Claire had a few scattered freckles on her back. "They execute first down there and ask questions later."

"Yee-haw," Claire squealed in a remarkably hill-billyish manner. "Yeah, the good ole boys would have a _field day_ with those Umbrella fucks. Barbecues and executions—never let it be said that we Southerners don't know how to party."

Leon laughed as he took a drink of his beer, even as his eyes were nearly magnetically drawn to gazing at Claire's ass as she stuck her head back under the faucet, rinsing out the shampoo from her hair. It was a damn good thing she couldn't see him. Once again, his best course of action would have been to remove himself from the situation immediately, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. "Sounds like a good time. I missed out on that stuff in Detroit. Up there, we just watch the Red Wings, listen to old Motown records, and smoke crack."

"You forgot to mention working in an auto plant," Claire said, running her fingers through her hair, working out the shampoo and knots. "You have to work at an auto plant, too."

"Yeah. And listen to Kid Rock and Eminem," Leon supplied, keeping the joke running. Claire Redfield, on her hands and knees, bent over—it was something out of some kind of fantasy Leon would try to deny having. Her hair, long and dark with water, hung trailingly into the water collecting in the bottom of the bathtub. Leon could see the little dark brown freckles on the back of her neck.

"_Ugh._" She sounded horrified. "What about the Stooges? MC5?"

Leon laughed a little. "Hey, we all smoke crack, remember? People who smoke crack are not known to have good musical tastes." God, she looked good. When had he gone from noticing that Claire was an attractive girl to blatantly staring at her while she was unaware? Leon felt a little like some kind of bizarre voyeur, watching Claire wash her hair.

Her hand reached out and groped blindly for the conditioner. "Ow. Fuck. Shampoo in my eye," she groused, her other hand reaching under the curtain of hair to rub at her eye. "Ow ow ow. Burns."

"Rinse it out with water," Leon supplied obviously, his brain too distracted to formulate a not-so-obvious response.

"Thanks, Einstein," she commented, as she did so. Rubbing at her eye in agitation as she let the water run over her face, she finally located the conditioner with the other and shook the bottle. She squeezed a liberal amount of that, too, into her hand and began to smooth it into her hair. "This probably strikes you as kind of weird, huh?" she asked as her fingers ran through the mass of wet auburn hair, gliding through it as easily as a hot knife through butter. Leon was amazed at how there did not seem to be a tangle _anywhere_ in all that hair. "Probably've never seen someone do this."

"I dated a girl who used to dye her hair," Leon said, thinking back—_huh, funny, I used to date. Wow, what was that, about a million years ago?_ "I saw her for a while right after high school. She used to do this…well, except she had a big sink in her laundry room and she'd stand up to do it."

"Oh." Claire was still carefully and methodically spreading conditioner through her hair—almost _lazily_, slowly. "Never dyed my hair before."

Leon resisted the urge to make a comment about how she shouldn't, her dark red-brown hair was nice, and instead took a drink of his beer. "This girl dyed her hair black all the time."

"Wow, a goth chick," Claire said with a snicker, placing both her palms down on the bottom of the bathtub and waiting—apparently, letting the conditioner soak in. "Didn't figure you for the type."

A little honesty couldn't hurt now and then. "Nowadays, I think I'm for _any_ type," Leon said with a sardonic snort. Since she'd been more or less living with him, it had probably become fairly obvious to Claire how little of a social life Leon had.

"Aw, what, the government isn't exactly a fulfilling mistress?" Claire teased, sticking her head under the faucet once more. Carefully she rinsed out her hair, running her fingers through it continually—God, it looked smooth and shiny and _amazing_, and Leon found himself wanting to run his fingers through it, too.

"Yeah," Leon said with a bitter smile, "case files and my side arms do a _lot_ to keep my bed warm at night." The fact that they were even having this conversation was setting off mild alarms in his brain. Were they _flirting_, or was Claire just giving him shit?

"Get a cat," she offered, helpfully. "Or find a prostitute. You're resourceful—you'll think of something."

"A cat or a hooker," Leon said in deadpan. "Wow, the answers to my problems were right in front of me the whole time." Claire chortled at this, gripping her hair between two hands like a rope and twisting it out—it _looked_ as strong as rope. "Thanks."

"Anytime," she answered cheerfully, releasing her hair to run her fingers through it some more before ringing it out again.

It dawned on Leon that Claire's hair-washing ritual had been going on for some minutes now, as had their conversation. "You take really good care of your hair, don't you?" he asked suddenly, immediately feeling like a dumbass for saying it. Kicking himself mentally, he drained the rest of his beer and tossed the empty bottle into the bathroom's garbage can.

Claire shrugged, or attempted to as best she could while in her bent over position. "Yeah, I guess I do. It's my best attribute. I reckon I'm kind of vain about it." Her arm flopped around behind her helplessly, searching for her towel. "Hey, make yourself useful and hand me that towel." She turned off the faucet.

Stepping into the bathroom, Leon stooped and complied, placing the green towel in Claire's waiting hand. He was directly above her then, staring down at her back and the knots of her spine, the bump under cloth that was the clasp of her bra. "When I was in Antarctica, that bastard Wesker was dragging me around by my hair," Claire began suddenly, while toweling her hair vigorously. The ends of it were dragging in the water that was slowly draining from the tub. "Goading Chris on, you know. It hurt like a mother, and the whole time he was doing it I kept thinking 'I've got my knife. I've got my knife'—I started thinking about waiting until he wasn't paying total attention to me and then pulling out the knife and chopping my hair off."

Sighing, she rocked back onto her heels, her head obscured by the constantly moving towel. "It was sharp enough. I could have done it. But then I started thinking about how dumb that would have been—I mean, he had a gun to my head. All chopping my hair off would have done is caused me to fall flat on my face or something, and then he'd probably have just shot me in the back of the head while I was trying to get up." She snorted. "Then, not only would I have had a closed-casket funeral but I would have looked absolutely retarded, whether or not anyone would have seen me."

"I don't really know what to say to that," Leon said, truthfully. "It kind of just pisses me off because Wesker is the _one_ thing that's missing from this trial."

"Yeah, well, shit happens," Claire muttered, voice obscured by towel. "He doesn't need a trial, anyway. Him and Chris have a date with destiny, or something. I wouldn't mind getting my hands on the guy myself." Suddenly she was laughing. "No _one_ fucks with my hair." Without warning she pulled the towel away from her head, leaving her hair to cascade down her back in glossy, wet tendrils. The towel balled in her lap momentarily, her fists clenching it.

Leon frowned slightly, observing her momentarily distant, bitter gaze; it looked into the shower tiles murderously. "Hey. You okay?" His hand momentarily alit on her shoulder, the fabric beneath his fingers splotted with wetness.

Shaking it off, Claire stood without the use of her arms and tossed the towel over the curtain rod, the dark cloud gone from her face. "Yeah. Just having a random moment of helpless rage." Flicking some of her hair over her shoulder, she exited the bathroom without another word, and Leon heard the door to the spare bedroom open and then click shut.

He removed himself from the bathroom and ambled back into the kitchen, obtaining another beer from the fridge. Popping it open, he drank some of it and then looked at his watch. Go to the store for food or order something? Order something or go to the store? Leon supplemented his ponderings with more beer, and then opened the fridge again to check the supply. Two, four, six, eight. Good enough to last the evening and then some considering it was Thursday and he had to be at the courthouse tomorrow morning at eight in a presentable fashion. Being hung over and irritated when he already had to deal with people he wanted to kill didn't particularly appeal to Leon.

The door to the spare bedroom opened down the hall and Claire sauntered into the corner of Leon's vision. "If you're hungry you can eat the other half of my sandwich," Claire said, pointing into the open fridge from across the small kitchen. It occurred to Leon that he was standing in front of the fridge with the door open, staring into it blankly. "If not, shut the door. The fridge light won't give you a tan."

"I think my mom has a magnet that says that," Leon said, pushing the door shut. "I was just taking stock of the beer supply." He turned to face her and noted that she'd changed her shirt, presumably because the other one was wet and soapy. The shirt was too large for Claire's small frame, draping over her shoulders and hanging down to her—

--wait a minute. Leon recognized the shirt. It was _his_ shirt. He'd kind of wondered why the hell Claire would have had an old, beat up Detroit Pistons t-shirt.

She noticed his questioning look and turned somewhat sheepish. "Oh. Uh, yeah. Sorry. It was hanging in the bathroom, and since all my stuff's gross and nasty, I figured it would be okay if I just wore this." Claire shrugged dismissively, running a hand through her hair. "I wasn't about to go digging through your closet or anything."

Good Lord, how long had it been since there'd been a woman in his apartment, running around in _his_ clothes? How long had it been since there'd been a _woman_ in his apartment, period? "It's okay. You could have gone through the closet, if you'd wanted to." He gestured vaguely at the shirt with his beer. "You can keep that, if you want. It's old and kind of getting too small for me."

Claire leaned against the wall, folding her arms over her chest. "Oh. Okay. Thanks." Suddenly she grinned, narrowing her eyes at him. "Yeah, you _are_ getting kind of big, aren't you? Suddenly slip into a jock phase, Kennedy?"

Leon didn't think he was _that_ much bigger, really. True, he had been working out more, but that was really because he didn't have much else to do and it occupied time. He didn't know whether to feel flattered that Claire had noticed or feel kind of awkward about it. "Not really," he answered. "I've got nothing better to do."

"Get any bigger and Chris'll start wanting to arm wrestle you," she warned, still grinning. "Be careful. I swear I've almost seen him break people's arms before."

Leon grimaced, walking past Claire to slouch down rather inelegantly on the couch, pushing some of Claire's clothes out of the way. He had decided _not_ to mention the semi-falling out that had occurred between Chris and himself in the Tahoe not too long ago. However, not mentioning it to Claire didn't mean that it hadn't _happened_. "Oh great. It's already bad enough that he's kind of weirded out by you staying here. That guy's going to grind my head into the pavement."

Snorting, Claire walked out into the living room and began to stuff her clothing back into her bag. "Oh, whatever. I've told you a million times that Chris is like that with _everyone_. He's harmless if he likes you—which he _does_," she said pointedly, looking over at him as she swiped her socks off the coffee table. "He just likes to give people shit. I think he likes to give you shit because he can get a reaction out of you. You get nervous. That's what he wants. Just stand your ground and throw it back at him—he'll respect that."

"It doesn't make me _nervous_, per se," Leon said, despite the statement being a kind-of lie—truthfully, the elder Redfield had every reason to be suspicious. After all, hadn't Leon just been more or less drooling over Claire minutes earlier? Leon knew _he'd_ have been suspicious if Claire was his little sister and she was shacking up with a guy that he kind-of-sort-of knew. Chris Redfield had every right to be suspicious, and what was more was that Leon _knew_ Chris was suspicious. The man had said so himself. "I guess I just don't want your brother looking at me like I'm some kind of threat. It doesn't sit right."

"Oh _please_." Claire put her hands on her hips and looked down at him chidingly. "Do you think I'd be hanging out with you if _I_ thought you were a threat? If I thought you were a douche?" She plopped herself down onto the opposite end of the couch, then thought better of it and popped back up just as quickly. "You're letting Chris get to you, which is what he wants. My brother's not an idiot, despite what people might think—he's got psychological warfare down pat." She headed down the hallway and returned a moment later with her beer from the bathroom. "You're lettin' him make you feel like a jerk for no reason."

_If you could only see into my head_, Leon thought in the pause, _you'd think I was a jerk too, and that your brother was right_. And he knew all too well how mean and intimidating Chris could be when he tried.

"Unless," Claire began saucily, "you _are_ being a jerk. I swear, if I wake up one morning with no memory of the night before and my clothes are on backwards, I'm going to—"

Leon managed his own chiding look over at Claire, although he felt distinctly uncomfortable. "_Right_, Claire. Actually, you're a little off—my devious plan entailed fattening you up and eating you, not sexually assaulting you. But I've got to hand it to you, you're on to me!" he said with mock brightness. "I'm a complete psychopath. _That's_ why I don't have a girlfriend—I've _killed_ them all."

She laughed loudly, scrunching her face up at him. "I always _did_ think there was something Ted Bundy-ish about you, Leon." Still laughing and smiling, she rolled her eyes. "Lighten up. I'm just kiddin' with you."

"I know." Looking down at his beer for a moment, Leon forced all the guilty thoughts and questioning and discomfort to the back of his mind forcibly. Sitting around and mulling over things was only going to make them worse, and that was the last thing he needed, especially with Claire around. Maybe his sudden infatuation with her would go away when they weren't in such direct contact all the time; who knew? It _had_ been a while since there'd been a woman in his life, after all; maybe he'd just fixated on Claire because she was there. Looking up, he cocked an eyebrow at her inquisitively. "But who says I was kidding with _you_?"

She bellowed with laughter and flopped back onto the couch, obviously highly amused.

"Whatever. _You_? A serial killer? My ass." She flipped her wet mane of hair out of the way and settled back into the couch, cradling her beer against her stomach. Claire's lips pursed for a second, as if she was thinking. "You know what? Let's go rent a movie or somethin'. We spend a lot of time sitting around here drinking beer and being morose. Let's try drinking beer and being cheerful, for once."

A corner of Leon's mouth quirked up. "What, you wanna watch a movie with the sociopath killer?" Claire reached over to swat him with an arm, and he laughed.

"What if you're not the only sociopath in the house?" she asked, looking at him deviously. Without warning, quick as lightning, Claire sat up and leapt onto the couch, standing on her feet in a crouched position, her beer in her hand. Her face was mock-serious but _Jesus_, when had she learned to move that fast? _Duh, Leon, she **did** take down the Paris Facility, you know,_ Leon's brain chattered. She grinned lopsidedly at him. "What if I'm just as crazy as you? What if I'm planning to kill your ass, too?"

Leon brushed aside his thoughts and mirrored Claire's grin. "Just my ass? Or all of me, Redfield?"

She bellowed out a laugh in response and cocked an eyebrow, wiggling it slightly. "I dunno. I guess we'd probably wanna save the best part of you, huh?"

"Oh _really_?" Leon chortled, standing, putting his hands on his hips. Claire straightened and stood on the couch, towering over him by a foot and a half or so. "The best part, huh?"

"It's obviously not your brain," Claire quipped, jumping down from the couch—but not before she leaned over and knocked him on the head once, snickering. "C'mon, Kennedy. We have a date with the local movie store we should keep. Maybe the local liquor store, too. Running low on beer."

"_Low_?" Leon asked in disbelief, before he'd even had time to process or feel guilty about the weird flirtation-type interaction that had taken place. "Shit, we've got eight left!"

"Running low," Claire affirmed, a sparkle in her eyes as she pulled on her shoes, one hand against the wall for balance. "I'll pay, but more beer will be required."


End file.
